


Touch Starve

by DesdemonaKaylose



Series: Strange Days at Black Hole High [3]
Category: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: (very casual), After all these years, Crossdressing, First Time, Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 04:56:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13651872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: Not everybody is out to screw you overor: Johnny and Jimmy bond in the high school au, and probably make it out alive





	Touch Starve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hyenafan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyenafan/gifts).



> I'm back to doing commissions for a bit!  
> For context, here's the [song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm5pdRsPRDc) I've been listening to for two days. This story contains the dreaded Sex so I hope everyone is buckled in and knows what to expect from me by now. I reread select episodes from the comic like. six times.

Fear and Loathe/Touch Starve

 

Edgar’s car left Jimmy in a cloud of dust, coughing into his fist. There was still no grass in Johnny’s whole neighborhood, seemed like, even with it being spring now. Jimmy took a couple deep breaths (once the air was clearer) and hefted the big box against his hip. The last time he was here it… didn’t end so well, but that’s no reason to assume this time would end the same way! Johnny was warming up to him lately, he just knew it.

Of course he said that last time too, but. Anyway, this time would be different!

Jimmy pushed the doorbell, which screamed at him like it knew exactly who he was and wasn’t all that pleased to see him. The place seemed like it was in slightly better shape, but it still made him kind of nervous with the boards on the windows and the… pipe… in the yard. He bounced on his heels, and then when the nervous energy grew too much for him, he punched the doorbell a couple more times.

The door crashed open, and Johnny’s hand whipped out, crushing down like a vise around Jimmy’s wrist.

“Do not ever,” he said, “ring that again.”

Jimmy stared at the hand around his wrist. “Sure,” he said, tongue darting out over his lips, “no problem.”

Johnny glared at him for a moment, and then snatched him bodily through the door. Jimmy tumbled across the floor, cardboard box flying into the air, and landed in a pile of clothes at least as tall as a small child. He rolled over to find Johnny standing over him, the box caught firmly in his hands.

Charity outreach was not, to put it lightly, an especially significant part of Jimmy’s lifestyle unless he was the party to whom charity was being outreached. Generally speaking if anyone in a community wanted it bettered, they usually started by removing Jimmy from said community. Therefore he was not especially fucking pumped about doing Edgar’s bullshit clothing drive for him, and mostly what had gotten him talked around to it was the promise of spending not one but possibly _multiple_ hours alone with Johnny.

Hey, a guy could try to kill you, but that didn’t mean you had to give up on him.

Inside the box there were as many shitty outfits as Edgar could collect up from the women at his church, just like the other boxes currently tipped over at random across Johnny’s floor. That was alright, they were supposed to be sorting them and reboxing them anyway. Leave it to Johnny to get a leg up on the competition!

Johnny skirted around him, making his way back to some unfinished charcoal drawing on the arm of the sofa. He took it up and pulled it to him with a look over his shoulder like he was _sure_ that Jimmy had been peeking, which was fair, because he had been. The sketchbook disappeared under the cushions and was no more.

Actually, to be totally honest, Jimmy kind of signed himself up for this. Last Wednesday, when they’d been hanging around after school. It wasn’t like he meant to or anything. It just sort of happened.

Where the edge of the school backed up into the overgrown garden of some shut-in spinster, at the north end of the campus, there was a wide concrete ledge that jutted out from the music building and smelled perpetually of crunchy green things no one would sell Jimmy. Tenna had hopped up on the far corner of it as soon as she arrived and made methodical work of the bag of month old valentines candy which she produced from some secret compartment.

Jimmy had his pen knife out, scratching jagged letters into the plaster of the wall behind the music building. He was scratching out the “Anne” in “for a good time call Anne G” and hacking “Jimmy” in underneath it.

“Are you putting your own name up there?” Tenna had asked him, around a mouth full of twizzlers.

Jimmy stepped back, admiring his handiwork. “I’m way more fun than that bitch and everybody oughta know it.”

Tenna looked like she was debating whether or not to say something, but as it happened she never got the chance. There was a rustle of leaves as Edgar pushed aside a low hanging branch and allowed Johnny to duck under it, mid-way through a conversation that sounded like it had been going for a while.

“—that it wasn’t signed by the right teacher,” Edgar was saying, “so it doesn’t count, you see?”

Johnny had one of his placid murderous looks on, the ones that made the air seem to crackle around him. “I could have a talk with the pencil-pushers,” he said, in a way that implied not much talking would happen. “Who’s in charge of this bureaucratic fiasco?”

“Johnny please,” Edgar said. “I just need to make the hours up, somehow.”

As they came closer, Jimmy could just make out the faint exhausted cast around Edgar’s eyes—kind of unnerving to see on a guy who Jimmy knew first hand set his watch each morning to make sure he went to bed at the Correct Hour. Jimmy tucked away his pen knife and sat back down on the ledge.

“You gonna fuck somebody up, Johnny?” he said, eyeing the catlike hunch of Johnny’s shoulders.

“Apparently _not_ ,” Johnny said, giving Edgar a sour look.

Tenna shook her paper bag full of old candy. “Aw,” she said, “don’t look so down about it. Have a twizzler.”

Johnny brightened. He took two long strides across the leaf strewn ground and leapt up onto the ledge, hands and feet. Jimmy blinked, stunned, as Johnny crawled over him to get at the candy, digging sharp knees into legs as he passed. It was like Jimmy’s presence didn’t even register.

Jimmy held very still, sucking nervously on the corner of his lip. There was always the chance Johnny would notice what he was doing mid-reach and blow a gasket, which, on a concrete surface, didn’t bode well for Jimmy. It would be better for him in the long run if it would be over soon, but also—also, this was the closest Johnny had been to him since that day in the basement, when Jimmy had thought in the middle of his concussed disorientation  that  Johnny, sitting up above him, had finally _finally_ wanted him—

One of Johnny’s hands closed around Jimmy’s shoulder, to steady himself, as he rummaged through the dimestore bag. Jimmy’s fingers ground into the concrete helplessly as he shot Edgar a desperate look, not sure what he was trying to communicate except that there was a _lot_ of it.

Edgar raised his eyebrows. Fat lot of help that was.

Jimmy coughed awkwardly. He tapped Johnny’s shoulder with one finger.

Johnny froze. He turned his head, fist full of twizzlers, and looked dead into Jimmy’s eyes.

“Your, um,” Jimmy said, “your knee. Hurts?”

Johnny looked down at where his knee was digging into the meat of Jimmy’s thigh. He frowned. Deliberate and cool, he pulled his candy to himself and climbed down. Jimmy slumped back as soon as Johnny was off him, some nasty cocktail of relief and disappointment nearly making him shake. When he had got the black spots to stop dancing in front of his eyes, he looked up and found Johnny still staring at him, a candy straw absently pinned between his teeth.

It’s a cold world to live in, when no one will look at you. Even the people who hurt you aren’t _really_ looking at you, they don’t _see_ you. They’re looking past you into some comforting simultaneous shadow play, a world like this one but simpler, where they are the hero and you are the cardboard fool who makes the satisfying Wilhelm scream when he hits the staircase. Jimmy can count the amount of people who have ever _really_ looked at him on a single hand, and one of them—

He was in seventh grade the second time it happened. He’d got into a screaming fit at the back of the classroom after one of the little prepubescent fuckheads said that his mom left ‘cause he was too annoying to live with and the old bitch Bitters hadn’t liked _that_ at all, so it was off with his ass to the principal’s office. He’d been shuffling through the hallways, tearing down random papers from the history project displays and crunching them up, when he passed by a classroom with an open door. He could hear the chaos even before he reached it, but the sight, when he stopped in his tracks in front of it, was fucking insane.

Some of the kids were huddled under their seats, crying, and a few of the others were running rampant around the edges of the room, ripping pages out of their textbooks and chewing on the desks. Something was on fire. Even the teacher, or especially the teacher, he was backed up against the blackboard flat as he could go. In the middle of it all, stalking down the row of desks with a stapler clutched in his hand like a weapon, there was a face that Jimmy hadn’t seen for a long, long time.

The panorama almost seemed to run down to a still frame in front of him. Johnny paused, and Johnny turned. He looked right at Jimmy.

All the way across the floor, picking his way around clumps of crying classmates, Johnny kept his eyes on Jimmy. When a tsunami bears down on a coastal city, it probably feels the way Jimmy felt in that moment. For a moment they were face to face, on either side of the doorway, and Jimmy thought—if he talks to me, I may throw up—

And then Johnny pushed the door closed between them, and all at once the bedlam inside the classroom resumed its fever pitch.

But a lot had happened since that day when the earth shook and the clouds opened and Jimmy stood with his heart thumping on his sleeve in front of a classroom door, rattling on its hinges.

In the garden behind the school, Johnny had bit through the middle of a twizzler without breaking eye contact. Jimmy just sat there, uncertain and heartsick.

There had been a time when he thought they were soul mates. Even now, even knowing what he knew and having seen what he’d seen, he couldn’t help…

Edgar had cleared his throat. “Anyway,” he said, briskly, “you won’t be seeing much of me for the next couple weeks. I’ve got a lot of work to do if I want to clear up this unbelievable clusterfuck.”

Johnny popped the last bit of candy into his mouth and sucked the tips of his fingers, quick and methodical. “We’ll help,” he said.

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, vaguely, with absolutely no idea what he was agreeing to. The image of Johnny’s fingers disappearing into his mouth didn’t leave a whole lot of room for other thoughts.

So here he was. In Johnny’s house. Surrounded by second hand clothes.

Jimmy sat up, criss-crossing his legs in front of him.

“Pretty dumb we got stuck with this shit, huh?” he said, hands on his sneakers. “You know we could still ditch if you wanna, get a soda or something.”

“Edgar needs the community service hours for his scholarship,” Johnny snapped. “He _deserves_ to get a scholarship. At least one of us deserves to get out of this shithole town. Are you asking me to endanger that?”

Jimmy put up his hands in surrender. “What? Come on man, jeeze.”

As Johnny carried the box over to the others and tumped it out, shaking the last mitten free, Jimmy bounced his legs.

“ _You_ could get a scholarship,” Jimmy said, after a moment. “Your work is metal as fuck, a million times better than those snooty bitches in the art room.”

Johnny glanced over his shoulder, unimpressed. “Do you mean my drawings, or my ability to break a person’s hand with a chair?”

The fluttery little sigh that escaped Jimmy earned him a _real_ nasty look, and he coughed abruptly, hiding his face behind his fist. “The drawings,” he said. “Uh. Not that the other thing doesn’t deserve some kind of recognition—”

Johnny discarded a torn shirt with a decisive flick of the fingers. “What would _you_ know about them?”

“I dunno,” Jimmy said. “I just think they’re cool. Kinda scary. Beautiful? I mean they obviously mean a lot to you, if you won’t let me… near any of them…”

His mood took a quick plummet off a steep cliff. He picked up the nearest piece of clothing on the floor and started folding it just for something to do with his hands.

“I like the ones that look like faces,” he said, a little defiantly. “Where they look like people almost, but not people, and you think maybe there’s something inside but it’s just wires. So then you wonder why it looks like a person if it’s not one.”

Johnny had his back to the room, but his hands were motionless over the pile in front of him. “So you do,” he murmured.

Jimmy brightened. “Truth is,” he said, “I never know what’s going on in people’s heads. They’re always saying one thing and then doing something else, or else they just sort of—” he made a series of motions, hands in little robotic chops, “—chug along like you don’t exist, until you trip their proximity alarm and then it’s a fucking _nightmare_. I dunno. I like your drawings.”

Johnny didn’t say anything for a minute. Finally, he pointed at the downward slope of the clothes pile without turning, and said, “You sort out the pants and stuff. I think it all goes in one box. I’m working on dresses.”

Jimmy scooted across the floor, shifted an arm full of things into his lap, and started sorting.

The day at the classroom door was where Jimmy’s life changed—for the worse or the better, he’s no good at saying—but it wasn’t his favorite memory. His favorite was older than that, its color worn off at the creases.

Jimmy’s favorite memory in the whole world was of an afternoon during summer camp almost ten years ago, when he was very small and his family still had the money to send him off places to do sort of fun things. He hadn’t gotten along with the other kids. “Doesn’t play well with others,” they wrote in all his report cards, back when teachers cared about that sort of thing. He was a scrawny little loud baby who would have done just about anything to avoid being ignored, and as it turns out, that is exactly the sort of thing that nobody likes to be around. Between the chronic nosebleeds and the willingness to eat bugs in exchange for a couple minutes in the spotlight, the only thing less popular than Jimmy had been the very concept of nap time.

Okay, so this doesn’t sound like it’s off to a very good start, but bear with him for a minute. The thing about having a shitty time is that if, for one sparkling rose-tinted moment, you manage to have a good time, it changes _everything_.  The earth moves under your feet. Jimmy might be dumb as hell, but that was one thing he knew for sure.

He remembered it like a movie, the camera panning up from the sandbox where the sand was splotchy with his watery blood, sunlight like a lens flare in his eyes. Johnny had looked down at him, the new kid, big eyed and teeny tiny, and said, “You’re bleeding a lot. We should be friends.”

On the floor, surrounded by other people’s laundry, Jimmy sighed happily. Of course there were years of stalking and near misses after that, new schools, bus rides, and of course one memorable attempted murder, but a guy never forgets first love.

At the end of the day, all Jimmy wanted was to—even just once—make Johnny feel as good as Johnny had made him feel. There were a lot of bad years, there in the middle, when Jimmy hadn’t had much except his memories. Sometimes all he’d had was the reassurance that at some point in his life, someone had thought he was worth their time. And if, after years of shredding those memories down to atoms in search of one more bright rose-colored moment, that person had reappeared? If that person turned out to be the coolest guy alive?

Jimmy paused, pockets of the pants he was folding turned out in search of spare change. “All those years when I couldn’t find you,” he said, “before high school. Where were you?”

“Getting my head screwed off, apparently,” Johnny said, with a grimace. Then, as if he wasn’t even talking to Jimmy really, with his eyes fixed on something far away, he said, “I can almost remember it… my room out there, the texture of it…”

His thumbs smoothed over the dress in his hands, the points of each nail pale and sharp in the dimness of the living room. The rhythm of it was hard to look away from.

“Sometimes I think that if I can just roll back the film a little further,” he said, “if I could just push it back beyond the place where my memory goes white, I could find the person I used to be before this sickness set in. I push and I push, but it never comes, and I’m left alone in this endless miserable darkness, wondering if that person even—oh look, a kitty!”

Johnny flapped open the dress and held it out in front of himself, almost sparkling with excitement. Just under the white collar, there was in fact the white silhouette of a cat on black satin, tail curled around its feet.

“I’m keeping this,” he said, and then immediately pulled his shirt off.

Jimmy just sat there, eyes like saucers, as every knob of Johnny’s back was revealed to the light. The wings of his shoulder blades, the faint inward dip of his waist—Jimmy caught his bottom lip between his teeth and bit down. When the cargo shorts came off, he had to draw actual blood. He had a distinct feeling that he was not supposed to be here for this, and he didn’t dare breathe too loudly for fear of being noticed and, inevitably, punished.

Johnny wriggled into the dress, his head disappearing and then reappearing from black satin. He pulled it down with a few neat tugs, brushing wrinkles out of the skirt, and did a couple little twists to see where the fabric was falling. His fingers reached for the zipper open down his back and then paused, unable to get to it.

“Damn!” he said, curling his hands into fists. “Damn! Every fucking time! I get one nice thing and every _fucking_ time—!”

“Um,” Jimmy said, tasting the heavy thump of his heart in his mouth, almost dizzy, “I could—get that for you.”

Johnny whirled, fists still balled at his sides, skirt flying out around him like a strange flower. He looked at Jimmy. Jimmy looked away. The round loop of Jimmy’s earring rolled under his fingers, tugging his earlobe in a way that was _almost_ painful enough to calm his heart down.

Johnny jerked his chin up, looking down his nose at Jimmy. “…Fine,” he said.

Oh shit. Jimmy stumbled to his feet, crossed the floor, skidded to a stop just before his hands could make contact. He had no idea where he was allowed to touch. On Johnny’s slender body there was so little safe space. Carefully, he slipped around behind Johnny and pressed a palm flat over his shoulder blade. Under his hand he could feel breathing, the swell and sink, getting—faster? Was it getting faster? Johnny pulled himself up tight under the touch, a total unaffected wall except for the way that even through his back Jimmy could feel his lungs fluttering—

Jimmy took the tiny zipper between his thumb and forefinger and carefully dragged it upward over the delicate knobs of Johnny’s spine. The fabric tugged and fought him. He leaned into his grip, fingers closing over Johnny’s shoulder, until finally the last stretch of zipper gave way. He lingered at the clasp, brushing the bare skin of Johnny’s neck, feeling weightless, almost as if his stomach was floating in his belly. He didn’t want to let go.

He was close enough that he could feel the tremors as Johnny started to shake. With a hard snap of motion, Johnny shoved himself away, arms curling tight around his body.

“That’s enough,” he said, and the low sharpness of his voice was something devastating, something that almost sounded close to tears.

Jimmy dropped his hands, belatedly. Fuck, what an idiot. He knew he’d pushed it too far, why did he always push things too far? He was always the last guy to hit the brakes, first guy to hit the gas pedal.

“You… okay?” he said, twisting his fingers together nervously.

The dress looked… pretty, on him. Even distressed and holding himself, dangerous as a shaken pipe bomb, Johnny still looked so nice. There’s this emotion that goes somewhere between being uneasy and horny and Jimmy lived most of his life there.

“I want to turn it off,” Johnny said, quietly, standing exactly where he had been. “Turn off this—want! Isn’t anything ever enough?”

“Uhhh,” Jimmy said. He retreated a step and sat down on the arm of the sofa, feeling more than a bit in over his head. “Isn’t what enough?”

Johnny threw open a palm, fingers twitching angrily. “My body has this insatiable hunger for flesh,” he said, “for human touch—it doesn’t understand that I loathe other people, with all their messy organics and empty eyes, wire and glass—”

“Oh,” Jimmy said, as if he had any idea what they were talking about. “Wait. Are we talking about—”

Johnny ignored him. “The hunger is maddening,” he said, closing his hand into a fist. “Relentless. Even now, it screams for satisfaction.”

Jimmy squinted, face screwing up in confusion. “Okay, then, couldn’t you just. Touch someone?”

Johnny turned sharply and pointed a finger directly at Jimmy, as if he’d caught Jimmy in an elementary mistake, smugly ready to prove him wrong. “But my mind—” he said, “my mind revolts at the idea of touching anyone who doesn’t care for my touch. How dare I impose myself that way on another person?”

Jimmy closed his hands in his lap. “You could use me,” he said.

Johnny waved him off, attention waning. “I may have tried to kill you once before,” Johnny said, “but I’m not completely monstrous.”

“-What?”

“Even you,” Johnny said, with a shrug, “I wouldn’t hurt you that way.”

“But, um,” Jimmy said. “What if I wanted you to…?”

Johnny’s hand dropped. His brow furrowed, eyes flickering as some difficult math went on inside his head. Jimmy sat forward—that wasn’t a no, that was _definitely_ not a no. A hot frizzon went down his spine, sweet and electric, lifting the hairs on the back of his neck. Want? Oh, Jimmy knew the _fuck_ out of want.

“Come on,” he said, sliding a little closer, “let me do it for you. I’m game.”

“For _me_ ?” Johnny said, narrowing his eyes. “Why the fuck would you want to do anything for _me?”_

It took Jimmy a second to work that one out. “Is this about the murder thing?” he said. “Cause I forgive you for that! It was a rough patch, no harm no foul.”

“It’s not—just that,” Johnny said, frustrated. “I’m not any kind of tortured artist or, fucking, gallant anti-hero. I’m not your psycho fuckboy dream boat, I’m just fucked up. We all know it now. You just happened to be the last one to figure it out.”

Jimmy tilted his head. “But I like that about you.”

Johnny gave him a dull look. “You like that.”

“Yeah!” Jimmy jumped down off the sofa. “You’re like—so cool, and you’re fuckin lightyears smarter than me, and after you tried to kill me you said sorry.”

Johnny actually laughed, sharp with a bitter edge. “ _Fuck_ ,” he said, “you’re an incurably bad judge of character.”

“I’d do anything for you!” Jimmy said brightly, “I’ve always felt that way!”

Too excited to think about what he was doing, Jimmy closed his hands around Johnny’s arms and started to pull him back towards the sofa. His heels kicked over piles of unsorted shirts.

“Let me do something for you!” he said, “You want to touch someone? Well I am a whole person! I can do that!”

Johnny just looked at him, eyes wide, as Jimmy pushed him down into the sofa, lifting his feet and rearranging him across the cushions. Jimmy climbed in between his knees, pushing the skirt up out of the way, thrilling at the softness of skin. He slid his palms up the length of thighs as he dipped in closer, hovering above Johnny’s prone form.

“Just tell me what you want!” he said.

Johnny’s mouth opened but, somehow, no sound came out. A vein in his neck pulsed with quick beats. Slowly, he lifted his hand, and pushed his fingertips into the place under Jimmy’s shirt where his ribs came together. Jimmy got the feeling he had something on his mind, but it was inscrutable, just like everything else about him. Dust drifted in the sunlight that crept through the window slats.

Shivering as nails scratched behind his ear, thighs flexing, Johnny made the smallest little noise. Jimmy reached down and grabbed him by the hips, pulling Johnny up into his lap. With the V of Johnny’s thighs pushed wide open against his stomach, Jimmy twitched up into the pressure of him, unable to resist how good it felt. Johnny made a choking noise, hands scrabbling at his skirt, twisting the hem tight around his fingers.

Jimmy panted, grinding up into Johnny, holding him tight. “Don’t worry babe,” he said, “I’ll make you feel good.”

Johnny made a noise that was mostly disbelief, but Jimmy ignored all of it. He folded back the last bit of satin, and with a bit of wiggling and adjusting, pulled off Johnny’s boxers and left them forgotten among the piles of other clothes. Jimmy swiped a thumb over the head of the pretty little thing between Johnny’s legs. Already it was starting to darken with interest under his touch.

“Thought you’d be bigger,” he said, absently.

Johnny made an infuriated noise, but that was all he had time to do before Jimmy had him in hand, squeezing and stroking his way down to the root. Johnny bucked against him, writhing in his lap as Jimmy tugged him through those first unbearably sensitive moments. Those were always the best, when you just started to touch yourself and everything was new and shivery. When everything was simple for a second. Jimmy held him still, forearm bearing down across Johnny’s chest where the dress was satin and cool. Finally, as the body in his lap started to still, Jimmy eased off.

“How’s that?” he said. “That’s how I get myself off.”

“How do you still have a dick?” Johnny panted.

Jimmy stroked his thumb down the side of the shaft idly. “Yeah,” he said, “it can be a little rough without lube. I usually got some on hand for—you know, the other part.”

“The other part,” Johnny echoed, giving him a suspicious look which he ignored.

“I guess you wouldn’t have any of that lying around,” he muttered, sitting back to get a new look at his surroundings. He was _just_ smart enough to know he shouldn’t suggest snooping around in Mrs. C’s room for lotion or whatever. Even though it would make this a lot easier.

All at once he lit up. He wriggled free, backing up and then lowering himself onto his elbows between Johnny’s legs. “I’ve always wanted to do this,” he said, running his tongue over his lips.

“You’re not actually going to put—” Johnny ran a hand through his own hair, frustrated again, “ _that_ , in your mouth. You can’t be serious.”

“Fuck yeah I am,” Jimmy said. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve jerked it thinking about sucking you—hey, stay still, this is tricky—”

With Johnny’s hips pinned under his hands, Jimmy licked that half-hard pretty thing into his mouth and guided it carefully over his tongue. The last inch or so wouldn’t fit, but he did his best with what he could get. God he wished he could get his nose pressed up against Johnny’s stomach, take him in all the way to the hilt. He sucked hard, bobbing his head the way he’d seen it done on those VHS tapes he wasn’t supposed to know about, loving the way Johnny’s heels dug into the sofa, the way Johnny moved under him.

When he popped free to catch his breath, wiping saliva from his chin with the back of his hand, he found Johnny staring at him with an expression like he’d taken a hit to the back of the head. Jimmy would have made a joke about garden pipes, but he was, actually, trying to catch his breath.

“That looks like torture,” Johnny said. He frowned, carding his fingers through Jimmy’s hair now, pushing it back off his forehead. “I can’t believe you fantasize about debasing yourself like that.”

It took Jimmy a second to remember what _debasing_ meant. His brain wasn’t getting the whole blood supply at the moment. He gave a little shrug, as much as he could, and nuzzled into the joint of Johnny’s hip. All his skin was that delicious soft brown, like the sun had never touched it, tight over his bones and temptingly thin.

“I mean, I’ll debase myself as much as you want,” Jimmy said, licking sweat from the crease of the hip. “I ain’t worried about it.”

“I didn’t say I wanted you to,” Johnny said.

Jimmy looked up, past the heavy curve of cock, over the jut of hipbone, and said, “Do you _not_ want me to?”

The sharp fingers tangled in his hair twitched, at the same time that the swollen cock against his cheek gave the tiniest twitch. For a moment, Jimmy felt like the most powerful person on earth, a nobody who could topple a crown with the flick of his chipped nail.

“Carry on,” Johnny managed.

Jimmy gently pushed Johnny’s cock back against his stomach and sucked at the heavy flesh underneath. It gave him a little shiver, seeing dangerously delicate flesh exposed like that, open to his fingers and teeth and whims and he would never _hurt_ Johnny, he would never do that, but knowing that he could—knowing how close he was—he was so hard that he could barely stand it. Fumbling with one hand, Jimmy tried to get his belt undone and failed, eventually settling for grinding the heel of his palm into his crotch as he worked. Fuck. One thing at a time. He licked at the saliva pooling in the corner of his mouth.

“I’m gonna go back down on you,” he said, gripping the hilt with his free hand. “You ready?”

“Why are you asking _me?”_ Johnny said, half a second before Jimmy wrapped his mouth around hardness and swallowed it, gagging in little shuddering starts. He pushed himself, forcing it in deeper. His skin was on fire, every bit of soft meat inside his chest screaming at him, white hot with adrenaline in his belly—his lizard brain was convinced that he was being choked to death and he leaned into it, swallowed it down, embraced the animal fear—

He jerked back with a gasp as Johnny pressed a thumb into the skin under his eye, where water was gathering in his lashes. Johnny pushed him back and held him there, until he seemed sure that Jimmy was listening.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Johnny said. He said it calmly, but there was something in his voice that you couldn’t dare argue with, something stone and gold, and Jimmy thought, again, of crowns. He let go, but his touch lingered.

Jimmy licked his wet lips clean. “Okay,” he croaked.

When Jimmy went back in to finish, he moved softer—palate to tip, flat of tongue to cockhead, candy-stripe licks. Johnny moaned softly and pushed up against him, cushions squeaking faintly against his flexing body. Jimmy petted down the side of his thigh and over the slight curve of cheek, absently soothing as he took Johnny to pieces.

Johnny panted and writhed like something that had never known human touch, wide-eyed and urgent and needy with his hands both buried in Jimmy’s hair, clutching tight. He rode Jimmy’s mouth as best as he could, full of sharp little keening sounds as he came undone. His whole body burned like a furnace under Jimmy’s touch. Then, almost rattling in Jimmy’s grip, he gave a wild jerk, leg slipping off the side of the sofa, and filled Jimmy’s mouth up with cum.

With zero warning.

And, well, it was already in his mouth which was the worst part, so Jimmy shrugged and swallowed it down. Johnny’s head fell to the side, lips parted as he took deep hard breaths.

“Shit,” Jimmy said, “you’re so pretty like that. I’m—hold on.”

Jimmy fumbled desperately with his belt and finally got it off, whipping it free of his belt loops and discarding it immediately. He pushed everything down around his thighs, clumsy, and dragged Johnny back into his lap. His dick just fit into the cleft of Johnny’s ass, with Johnny’s knees pushed back against his chest and his legs hooked over Jimmy’s shoulders. Johnny gave him a bleary sideways look.

Jimmy ground down into the hard give of that lightning rod body, into the soft spot, relentlessly—he was fucking desperate, anything would do, he would have fucked himself against the carpet if he’d had to—

Limp against the cushions, Johnny said, “If you get anything on my dress, I will gut you like a fish.”

Jimmy almost choked. If Johnny had wanted to make him spontaneously spill over every surface in range, he was doing a fucking top notch job.

He settled for snatching something off the ground at random and jerking himself into that, in the warm secret place between Johnny’s thighs. He crouched over Johnny, fist working, soft cotton squeezing his skin. He could own Johnny like this, hold him down, give him what he needed—what he wanted, what only Jimmy could do for him—all he needed was the word and he’d do it. Jimmy came, with his hips pistoning into his own hand until the dam in his body gave way to sweet shuddering relief. He dropped the whatever it was onto the floor and slumped against Johnny’s chest.

“You’re disgusting,” Johnny said, without much heat.

“God,” Jimmy breathed, “I wish you could fuck me.”

After a moment, Jimmy peeled himself free, sat back, and leaned down. He licked the last of the wet from Johnny’s cock and rolled his skirt back down, tucking everything back into the approximate right place. You almost wouldn’t know he’d just had his dick _masterfully_ sucked, except for his still kinda dazed expression. Jimmy grinned and levered him up off his back, ignoring the protestations. He settled back into the corner of the sofa and pulled Johnny against him, tight against his chest.

They sat like that for a long time, just breathing, first out of sync and then slowly in tandem. Jimmy thumbed small circles against Johnny’s back.

“Told you I’d take care of you,” Jimmy said, absently, watching the light through the window wax and wane as clouds passed invisibly over the sun.

Johnny’s face was buried in his shoulder, their legs all tangled together. He made a little sound, a kind of uncertain sound.

Jimmy’s hand stilled on his back. “That was—that was good, right?”

Johnny was quiet for a minute. “I knew you wanted me,” he said at last, muffled against Jimmy’s neck, “before. I don’t understand how you—why you wanted to do that. Now.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said. “Well,” Jimmy said. “You’re still the same person I fell in love with, you know? I just wanted to get to know you better is all.”

Bit by bit, Johnny pulled back. He looked at Jimmy, kind of like he had back at the beginning, down his nose. Jimmy gave him a nervous smile. Having Johnny’s full attention on him like this made him feel like he’d swallowed an electrical cord, scary and good and well maybe that wasn’t the right comparison but, it was both scary and good, definitely.

So few people had ever really looked at Jimmy. Johnny was the first, a long time ago, and if he was the last as well, then that would be alright too.

Johnny tucked one finger under Jimmy’s chin. He lifted it.

“I think,” he said, eyes narrow as he searched in Jimmy’s face for some arcane secret, “I might be happy.”

“Oh!” Jimmy said, still nervous. “You think so?”

Johnny watched him for a moment more. And then, hesitantly, he pressed his closed lips to Jimmy’s.  When he pulled back, his finger beneath Jimmy’s chin remained. His brows came together, puzzled, as he worked a thought over behind his eyes. “You’ve made me happy,” he said.

Jimmy let a bubble of laughter pop in his throat, pulling Johnny tight against his middle and squeezing. Johnny gave a little wheeze but put up with it, running a hand absently through Jimmy’s hair again.

“This is a good moment,” Johnny concluded.

There had been scarce and rare good moments in Jimmy’s life. He knew how precious they were, how much you needed to have them when the bad times come back around. If he could be one of those for Johnny—he almost felt like crying but he didn’t cause he didn’t want Johnny to ask him why he’s crying, and then he’d have to explain the whole embarrassing thing—

“It’s a shame it has to end…” Johnny murmured. His nails scratched cool shivery paths over Jimmy’s scalp. “I could keep it from ending… I could keep you here with me forever…”

Jimmy paused. Maybe it was just how close he was to the scattered rhythm of Johnny’s heartbeat, or maybe it was those years of watching from the sidelines, the yearning and the waiting, but he felt something dangerous pushing up into this moment. Like a razor blade through cotton candy. He held Johnny tighter, breathing the weird sex smell in the curve of his neck, and tried desperately to be here, in this moment.

“I’ll go anywhere you want babe,” he said, “don’t send me away and I won’t go, alright?”

Johnny was very still, and then Johnny softened against him. “Well alright,” he said. He looped a hand around Jimmy’s back, leaving it there.

If Johnny really could have kept him here forever, if there was a way Johnny could take him and keep him, Jimmy thought he’d let him. That was all he’d wanted for years, to throw himself down at Johnny’s feet, on his mercy, and be taken away. To mean something to someone.  

In Jimmy’s heart there was sunlight and sand and blood, and everything else that came after. The taste of cherry ice. The swing of a bare basement light bulb. Ugly-pretty, like fire in a building when the wallpaper crackles and goes black. He’d always been Johnny’s.

Jimmy shifted. Something under the cushions gave a creak, just the tiniest little sound, and suddenly Jimmy remembered the Forbidden Sketch Book underneath the cushions, and Jimmy wondered how the fuck he was going to get out of this house before Johnny noticed what they’d done to it.


End file.
